AMD's Locked $55 Athlon is now Overclockable using new MSI BIOS

3.2GHz, Nah! Overclock that to 3.9!

AMD's Locked $55 Athlon is now Overclockable using new MSI BIOS

When AMD released their Zen-based Athlon 200GE processor, they revealed that the processor would be their first locked Zen-based desktop processor, lacking support for precision boost and other performance-enhancing features.

Things have changed over the past few months with the YouTube channel TechEpiphany discovering that the Athlon 200GE is overclockable using certain BIO files, revealing a similar UEFI bug to what was seen in early Skylake non-K processors.

Using this method, TechEpiphany managed to achieve a clock speed of slightly over 3.9GHz, a significant boost over the dual core's default 3.2GHz clock speed, representing an increase of over 20%. Tom's Hardware has managed to validate these findings using an MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC motherboard using its latest BIOS files.

While overclocking a dual-core may not be high on some people's priority list, the performance bump seen here may be more than worthwhile for those who use the Athlon 200GE as a basic desktop machine or as part of an HTPC or a home file storage server. This will push the CPU over its 35W TDP, though depending on the user the additional power draw may be a price worth paying.

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